Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Unlike tattoos, t-shirts are less permanent. They can be tossed away quickly to discard the embarrassment.

Yet, for that brief moment of hearing people quietly discussing what is on your t-shirt is still quite uncomfortable. Fearing the few minutes of uncertainly will come back to haunt you, it lingers in the back of your mind.

“Happy [hand] violation”, is it some kind of idiom? Or a sexual euphuism for “happy ending” at one those dodgy massage parlors, which always advertise in the back of free publications? (Note: the missing dot in 違, perhaps the client is not done yet.)

Most people love their mother or mothers (children with lesbian parents and/or born from fertilized eggs via surrogate mother would have more than one mother).But, it takes a special talent to screw up “mommy” so bad that it would be read as “female horse rice”.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Ryan emailed me this morning after he saw an article about my site in the newspaper. He said the translations of his tattoos were given to him long time ago, he still wanted to verify to see if they are correct or not.

In his email, he has mentioned that the center set of four black characters with red outline 士小王玄where chosen solely based on their looks; therefore I will only focus on the rest two sets of tattoos.

Ryan was told the set of red characters meant “samurai/warrior and something else”. Due to their poor qualify, the two kanji characters looked like either 丈夫 or 大夫.

I've seen T-shirts and tattoos with the Chinese character 和 interpreted to mean "harmony." But many people don't know that while 和 can mean "harmony," in modern parlance most Chinese speakers use it to mean "and" or "with."

While I was reading Dearment’s article, Andrew approached me with a very fundamental philosophical question:

"Is the propagation of knowledge [of languages] a good thing, even when we know that it is often misused?"

My answer?

The answers are both yes and no. Yes, if they are done correctly. No, if one culture is simply exploiting the other for their own instant gratification.

Sunday, April 9, 2006

“My wife and I are looking at getting a couple of tattoos using Chinese characters, and since I am a longtime fan of your site, I thought I would ask you your opinion of Formosa Translation. Does this seem like a reputable translation service to you?”

I could browse through the links he sent briefly and give him a quick “go ahead”, but I would be then compromising my own ethics. I even wrote about Eri Takase’s poor translation choice just a few days ago.

Certainly there are many sites on the internet and tattoo shops advertise “get your Chinese/Japanese tattoo here”, but they are in the business of making money.

Many professional translation services like Good Characters usually decline translation services that involve tattoos due to liability issues. Since there is obviously no control of how the translations would be used. In some cases, even when the characters are correct themselves, but during the transfer process, the characters are placed onto client’s body incorrectly.

Looking at your latest posting about a 'good' translation service, there is one generic piece of advice you can give out, basically you can't trust any of them. What do you do? Use many.

Basically, give the same query to two translations houses and see if you get the same result back. If not, you have an 'issue'. If you really want to make sure you are correct, you can also have one translate it, and then pay another to translate it back. Then again, that is pretty much what you do.

Several medical transcription companies do more or less the same thing, they do the work twice and then compare the two results. If there is a mismatch, both are redone. It costs twice as much, but in both cases, tatoo and translations, it is probably worth it. :)

I did not know if I should give her the straight answer of “you might be good at painting homes, but you suck at Chinese calligraphy. Since you are so into proverbs, here is one for you: 画蛇添足” or persuade her to something else.

First, we must remind you that our primary purpose is to categorize the misuse of Chinese (and to some extent Japanese) in Western society, which includes the use of characters as artistic supplement simply because they are seen as 'symbols'.

While we understand that you have been asked to produce 'about ten' characters, we must refrain from offering any advice or correction on possible choices as that could be seen as an endorsement on our part.

While we admire your interest and, judging from the attached 'proverbs' picture file, must say that your writing is better than most submissions to this site, our principles prevent us from assisting in spreading the view of Chinese characters as exotic symbols that add an aura of Oriental mystique, when for us, they are a communication tool that more often than not is grossly misused in Western society.

However, you may want to enquire at Good Characters or someone who specializes in work that follows along the lines of your projects. We suggest making local inquiries as well, since depending on the size of your local Chinese population, it may be possible to hire someone with proper brushes and writing skill.

In summary, we cannot promote Chinese characters as art to be viewed and not understood. Should your clients desire a 'Chinese feel' to their homes, landscape paintings in the traditional style may be a better choice. We hope that you understand and wish you good luck in your endeavors.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

“This is a tattoo that I want to get Number 4. In the center it is suppose to say ‘family love.’ On the left, I have two names, ‘Zoe’ on top and ‘Angie’ at bottom. On the right, I have two names, ‘Grady’ on top and ‘Jordan’ at bottom.”

Surprised by the translator’s choice of using 下流 as “Jordan”, I asked Scott if that was a mistake.